– DECEMBER 23-24, 2015

After a couple of days in Bangkok we have hit the road west towards Sai Yok.  We will be out here for the next four days over Christmas.  This area should be quieter and a bit more serene as we enjoy Christmas away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

We took the water taxi to the train station, then rode the rails for the next 7 hours to reach our destination.  Along the way the train stopped for about 20 minutes right beside a roadside portable shopping centre.  Trucks backed up and unloaded racks of clothing (blue jeans for $1 and shirts for even less), food, bootleg dvd/cd, jewelry, etc….it was as wild experience watching them pull out racks and racks of random shirts and pants.  The people would try them on right there on the spot, no dressing room needed.

This journey wasn’t a popular one at this time of year, so we had the train cars all to ourselves for pretty much the whole journey.

It was late when we arrived at the resort, so we had a late dinner and then called it a night.  The next day the hotel staff arranged for us to have a private driver (for free no less…it pays to be one of the only guests there) to take us to town for water bottles and a visit to the Taweechai Elephant Camp Sanctuary.

Here they have various elephants ranging from all ages.  They have them perform some simple, yet fun tricks that entice the visitors to buy banana baskets to feed the elephants.

This was an unexpected, yet awesome experience.  Coming up is Christmas!

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For more photos of our adventure go to our flickr account here.